March 2, 1998
Readers seeking evidence of "Nature red in tooth and claw" will find it in this first-rate popular science book. Grice, who teaches humanities and English at Seward County Community College, examines in feisty, felicitous prose the life and lore of some lesser predators--spiders, mantids, tarantulas, rattlesnakes, pigs and canids. He notes that the praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head--the better for the female to decapitate her mate as they copulate. Grice attends a rattlesnake roundup, visits a pig factory and talks with wolf-dog breeders. He discusses similarities between pigs and humans, wolves and humans. He describes, in gruesome detail, the effects of spider and snake toxins on the human body. While not for the queasy, the book captures attention, and not least in its philosophic leaps. The bite of the black widow (red hourglass) spider, Grice explains, is lethal far beyond what is necessary to kill insects, its normal prey; it can slay mice, frogs, snakes, cats, dogs and humans. And so in that spider, Grice writes, "the analytical mind finds an irreducible mystery, a motiveless evil in nature."